Making Education Less Boring in Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). The event has broken into streams and digital education one is on the future of higher education with broadband. Speakers are Dr Evan Arthur, Group Manager, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Technology, Information and Learning Support, Queensland University of Technology and Stephen Wilson, CIO, NSW Department of Education and Training.

Dr Evan Arthur argues that we need to work through the issues of access to digital material for education. This is a harder challenge than the last one he set.

Infrastructure for our Boradband Future

Greetings from the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum Sydney. Brad Weam, CIO Iron Ore, BHP Billiton is talking about the network used for running iron ore mining in Western Australia to Port Headland. This shows how broadband is literally part of Australian infrastructure. Without the telecommunications, Australia's mining industry would stop. It happens that some years ago I was part of a HQ Australian Defence Force party which visited northern Australia, including Port Headland, looking at how to protect it. While my military colleagues discussed how y satchel charges a terrorist would need to blow up an LNG refinery, I looked at the telecommunications. It would have only needed cutting a few cables to disrupt Australia's major industry. Since then a level of redundancy has been introduced, making a disruption to the system much harder.